Am I improving? Finding metrics

[gloosle]

I’m paying a coach on training peaks a solid amount of $$ to improve my MTB fitness. I’ve worked with him since December of 2022 and seen my FTP go from 155 to 230 down to 135 (took a low month for professional use so didn’t have high volume then had a baby born right around this FTP test) and now back up to 200.

My weight went from 199 lbs /91 kg to 230 lbs / 104 kg during the past year too despite eating pretty good. I contribute that to less lifting (going from lifting 5x / week) in addition to a couple of 1 hour rides / week and the occasional long ride to training peaks with 1-2 “lifts” vortex training lifts and secondly to “sympathy” pregnancy weight which is apparently a thing. If I want to be at 15% body fat and lose no lean mass I would be about 195 which is what I like (I’m sure a lot of ya’ll on here are more serous riders than me - I also like to lift, backcountry ski, backpack).

I’ve been MTBing for a long time but have only recently decided to put in effort into my training so I don’t get smoked on my climbs. My DH solid - during a local MTB race I was in top 10 there and I started as a more DH / enduro / shuttle rider.

I am looking for help on charts / metrics that can help me figure out if I’m actually getting into better shape. Is that power / hr? My coach tells me FTP isn’t really a measurement for fitness so I try to not use that. I’m just worried that I’m not improving much. Maybe its that my engine was / is so low that its hard to see on the trails but I still top out in granny gear on silly climbs or on my fat bike on a 50 foot climb HR shoots way up. It seems like my power / hr hasn’t really changed, if we disregard FTP (and if we don’t I’ve gained weight and not good weight) and my watts / kg is pretty awful.

Thanks for any insights!

[gloosle]

Not looking for any coaching advice specific to me just ways to help me identify if I am improving and if its worth it to keep with a coach. but here’s my fitness chart from the past year (not quite when I started with him - but fairly close.

[Gerald]

What were your goals, and how did your coach communicate the way forward to help achieve those goals? Did you achieve the goal(s), or only get part of the way?

Metrics that you need to use need to be relevant to the goals you want to achieve, or the steps along the way.

If someone wants to raise their “FTP”, and the measure is the 20-min test, then it’s easy to setup training to build intensity around 20-min. However, extending “FTP” from 20-min to 45-min might be at a similar power level, but now you can hold it for longer. Measuring it would give a different result.

Once you’ve answer yourself on what you wanted to achieve, then you can look at metrics to quantify your improvements.

[Jcmiii]

FTP is defined as 100% of 60 minute power, the L2 Anaerobic Threshold, or in general terms the state where your body is eliminating lactic acid as fast as it is being produced.

Vo2 max at 105% and Anaerobic at 121% of FTP are areas targeted to increase Vo2 max and Anaerobic zones. 30s to 8 minute sprints are improved. This app will chart W’ and has a link to information on what that is and why it matters. (So cool! Great app!)

So, yes, this caught my eye. “My coach tells me FTP isn’t really a measurement for fitness so I try to not use that.” I have to ask what are you using as a reference during your training sessions? If not ftp, then what? Are you trying to improve whatever metric that is or if not, what? These are the types of questions that would be going through my head if I was in your position.

I would expect my coach to give evaluations of my progress on the goals we agreed on, the metrics used to judge those, and any changes in the plan going forward. Certainly the reduced time you can now allot must have changed your goals and training somewhat. Could be time for a new training plan?

[gloosle]

My goals last year were simply to get into shape to do a big bikepacking trip I had planned for September and to not be left in the dust on high alpine climbs by friends. I’m trying to remember back but I think I wanted an watts / kg of 2.3 or for 60 minutes which I didn’t hit. I was / am still new to metrics so I didn’t have any specific FTP goals or anything. previous two winters I had done zwift’s MTB training program in the off season with all my lifts. My wife got pregnant about 3 months after I started working with coach and that made things tough as well as a one month professional reason to decrease load in September (conferences) and October (big test).

He uses the FTP for setting my zones but he tells me not to dwell on what FTP is currently beyond it sets our zones for appropriate training and nothing more.

This year I added a new bike - a salsa cutthroat - to my arsenal so I can cart my little one around in a trailer with my wife who will be getting back to it and wants to use her gravel bike more. so my goals are endurance and aerobic engine setting myself up for long term. This is my first gravel bike. my main bike is a big burly enduro (hightower LT CC) and a fairly aggressive hard tail (chameleon). I want to be in good aerobic shape to build a base for big adventure rides as my little guy grows. I think my high end is OK I’ve hit >1000 watts a few times for climbs - i think my power curve this year is off a bit since my fat bike doesn’t have a power meter so all my rides on there don’t show anything.

Here are the goals I have on my shared document with my coach –
spring:
Improve FTP back to >200 watts ( MET THIS)
Improve 90 min watts to > 165 on mtb and 180 on trainer
work on body recomp / fat loss to help make it easier to hit 2.25 or greater watts / kg

Summer
Improve FTP to 240 for 20 minute test (Closer to events)
Improved muscular endurance / power for bikepacking and long rides
Improve cardio endurance - be able to maintain lower HR zones during higher intensity rides / climbs with no loss of MPH / PWR / Time compared to previous rides
VO2 max from 35 up to 46 or higher (peaked at 45 last summer on my garmin)

• I have some goals for certain climbs as well

and I think maybe that’s my problem I want this and that but also have a poor engine due to a history of lifting and short rides. I used to guide backpacking, canyoneering and climbing but that’s now 10 years past with a multitude of injuries / surgeries and graduate school.

I appreciate the input and feed back. I’m new but also have delved into a lot of various topics / videos / articles on this and I think I’m growing in my understanding. Tough going from a heavy lifter and weekend rider to a more serious rider and casual lifter.

[Jcmiii]

Ok. You have specific goals you and your trainer have agreed on. I will assume he has developed and is monitoring and adjusting those training plans as needed to reach your goals. Your question deals with how to evaluate your metrics and to measure your progress yourself. I think I misunderstood.

Some general background I’ve picked up. Some excellent athletes know the nuts and bolts of training to a fine degree and have a coach anyway. Some excellent athletes know very little and leave everything up to the coach. Some coaches are great communicators and others not so much but both can coach well. Some are not even people persons, ie. “a person who enjoys or is particularly good at interacting with others.”

You of course know all this but for whatever reason have not asked your coach the questions you are asking here. Or perhaps he didn’t explain well enough or go into enough depth to satisfy you of the validity of what he was saying. Something else maybe. Whatever, I’d recommend you let him know you have questions and need them answered, all of them, until you are satisfied. Ask for details if that is what you need. Let him know you are questioning how effective the training he has laid out for you will be.

Bottom line. Unless you are confident and fully committed to his training plan, you will not reap all the rewards. If every pedal stroke you’re asking yourself if that is leading you in the right direction, that can’t be a good feeling. If anybody is in a position to give you the instruction you need to understand your training plan, it’s your coach you’re paying a “solid amount” of money to. Honestly, the amount of knowledge he has had to consume to be effective at coaching covers volumes. There are advanced degrees for this stuff. It’s not just one metric or two.

[Gerald]

As @Jcmiii has mentioned, your goals seem quite detailed.

• Have you asked him (your coach) how he measures your progress?
• Does he give you process goals/steps to show how you’re progressing?
• Does the tell you how the workouts help you achieve your goal?

Example:
Your 90-min power >165 is probably extensive training, i.e. similar to TTE.
Your way of measuring this is not really a metric, but rather progress.
A metric is a defined way of measuring it, and testing the same way each time.
You could use aerobic decoupling, but then only compare rides of similar efforts, and don’t compare to an endurance (Z2 ride).

[gloosle]

yes and when we have our video chats every month or two he shows me stuff but rarely anything in writing. And I guess when i say metric I mean something to show my progress or what I’ve done - a way to affirm the work I’ve put in (or tell me, yeah you’re not doing things right).

and I think I got my answer just playing with my power curves and then some charts on training peaks. My power curve from last December to march - put in custom dates - compared to this January is showing my power is much higher now beyond my 2-7 second power this year. so it dipped this fall but is now much higher than last year at the same time.

[Michael_Landmann]

It’s really difficult to evaluate your improvement if you are bringing in your metrics from technical mountain bike rides. Unlike a road bike or on a trainer, you will be far more focused on picking the lines and avoiding the obstacles then the amount of power that you can sustain.

As you said, your power profile will give you an indication, but regularly testing yourself on your 1 minute, 5 minute and 20 minute power on non-technical rides will give a fuller picture.

[Gerald]

@Michael_Landmann

It’s really difficult to evaluate your improvement if you are bringing in your metrics from technical mountain bike rides. Unlike a road bike or on a trainer, you will be far more focused on picking the lines and avoiding the obstacles then the amount of power that you can sustain.

Time covered over a segment is also a way to measure progress. Fitter and stronger, as well as technically better means fast times.

It’s a bit off the standard metrics, but it comes down to what one is trying to measure.

I know that if I spend time practising riding MTB lines, I can be 5-10 minutes quicker over a marathon distance event. That’s the difference, for me, between a podium position and a top 5 in my age group.

[Frederic_Audet]

I’m no coach so take my opinion as a enthousiast statistician, but my favorite metric is “Efficiency” (Normalized power / Avg Heart rate).

It is easy to wrongly analyse it, but showing this year and last year in a graph, I can clearly see the trend in my fitness level.

Have fun !

[MedTechCD]

Lot’s of valuable wisdom in this blog post

Volume Is A Good Explanation

[Brian_Keane]

Firstly, (and sorry to be blunt) i would ask what are you really paying a coach for, if you’re having to come here to ask if you’re improving. - Please read that as constructive criticism, there are a lot of people out there who are happy to take your money and not give you what you paid for

Not knowing how you’re training, hard to accuratley comment but in terms of fitness the first graph in this screen shot is the one to be looking at, but it is good to know what fitness (or chronic training load CTL) actually means

So first you need your baseline - thats your FTP, and it’s important to keep this accuarate with regular testing (6-8 weeks). From this you get your intensity factor. ie FTP =200, 1 hour @ avg 100w: Intensity factor = 50% or 0.50

Then you can get your training stress score TSS for any given session.
TSS = (Power x IF x time (hours)) / FTP x 100. Above example would be a TSS of 25.

So what is fitness. Fitness is your average daily tss over a 6 week period. It’s not actually fitness, it’s a measure of what you have consistently done. Say you do the above session every day for 6 weeks- your fitness score will be 25.

Fatigue is your average daily TSS over the last week. Form is simply Fitness - Fatigue.

Now here’s the important bit. To improve, you need your fatigue to be constantly greater than your fitness. (ie your form needs to have a negative value) ie in above example of 100w for an hour for every single day. Fitness = 25, Fatigue = 25 Form = 0. Form at 0 just means your ticking over, your not ready for a race (not a positive number) and your not progressing (not a negative number)

So say in your last week, you’ve upped your rides every day to 75% effort (tss 56). This would mean new fitness = 30, fatigue = 56, form = -26. NOTE your form shouldn’t go beyond -30, otherwise you’re overtraining. Good healthy sustainable training would probably result in a fatigue score of about 15-20.

Lastly, you can similiarily control your taper for race day by making your last week lower than your fitness score meaning a positive form score (i think 10 form is roughly what you aim for. Say, Fitness = 28; Fatigue = 20; Form = 8. As Fitness is a 6 week metric and Form is a 1 week metric, form goes up much quicker than fitness goes down, so you retain most of the benefits of your training load, while having the freshness to do your best on raceday.

So that’s you you interpret your fitness / form graph - i hope that helps, and that’s how your track your fitness or training load.

Otherwise like others say, you track your improvement on known segments (and with mtb training, there is an aspect with technical ability that cannot be tracked matematically any other way by finish time), but the above speel should ensure you train the right way

[Jcmiii]

@Gerald

Time covered over a segment is also a way to measure progress. Fitter and stronger, as well as technically better means fast times.

I’ve definitely noticed that for myself. Although I’ve never really spent much time parsing segments, I just feel so much better at the end. What’s surprised me about the experience over many years is that I’ve never gained much base aerobic fitness from the rides themselves. I thought I could ride myself into shape and that didn’t work out as I had hoped. I’m finding that following plans building on base aerobic fitness with the occasional bigger shorter efforts is allowing me more hours in the saddle with better results.

Unfortunately that results in far less time on challenging MTB trails and far more time on the trainer or on easier trail efforts, which is altogether a different story.

[Ryan_Kohler]

Have you already had this same conversation with your coach? To find the metrics, etc that you’re looking for?

[Ryan_Kohler]

Sorry, didn’t see this reply before I asked the same question about having that conversation with your coach. Next question: can you describe your vision or trajectory for any given time period? Do you have an understanding of the direction you’re going, what is meaningful for you, and how you will get there? Many times I find athletes rely on this to come solely from the coach when it really needs to come from both parties as a collaborative effort.

IMHO a video call every month or two is inadequate to track progress and communicate effectively in this context. I do 15 min weekly calls in addition to activity comments for what it’s worth.

[BillP]

Honestly i never worry about FTP although at one point i thought i had to. I could be just plain wrong BUT… for me riding to just simply get better with no particular goals or racing i look at my power over time, efficiency factor, decoupling, time in zones, and the fitness chart.

The whole FTP thing is a tough game to play, i would rather know the correlation between my ride and what ive been working on. If i have been working on some sweet spot and intervals it typically correlates to an improvement at those power levels for (hopefully) increasing duration. This matters more than the FTP number which i use solely as a target metric (KPI?) for setting training zones, ill test when i feel like i am crushing rides in my current zones and need to notch up.

To your question this “Power” tab/section on the left shows performance across your choice of dates or seasons. Note the bottom right chart in the pic is Estimated FTP.

[gloosle]

Thanks for all the input everyone. there’s definitely a lot to mull over and I do appreciate the bluntness. I know that my fitness is well below most who train a lot and I was making steady progress last year until anniversary, conferences, and processional stuff took me down for a month and my volume tanked to just a few hours / week. My power curve past 42 days compared to all of last year is below what it was then outside the 10-18 min; but comparing it to similar times last year I’m above definitely above where I was.

it is definitely hard being a mountain biker in rural mountain region with non busy trails and excellent downhill but then feisty climbs that I want to do but are well above my zones - like putting me into 5+ for entire climbs so I should be dong more mild stuff but that means finding gravel. until now; my closest bike to that was my hardtail bikepacking bike. I do hope to do a lot of gravel this year hauling my newborn as winter ends in a few months.

I think my biggest concern is weigh… I went from 200 to 230 lbs last year. I know my wife was pregnant and we moved so compounding factors but my eating stayed fairly decent (I meal prep). I gained significant body fat %. As I had said previously, I was a lifter who biked for fun. My ideal weight is currently 195; with my current lean mass I’d be 12% body fat probably a lot different than a lot of cyclists. I’ve tried buckling down more on the diet and do a cut like I’d do if I lift but I crash on rides. so I’m not sure how to get this back to where I was.

I’ve added a few things to my charts based upon information here and I appreciate that. I know that eventually I’d like to set up my own training but for now it’s nice to have someone guiding me along.

[Chris1982]

@gloosle lots of great info above.

I’d just casually hit you w this: Is it possible you started this thread bc in the back […or front…] of your mind, you don’t really like your coach, aren’t happy with their service so far vs. the $, and would be happier either self-coached, or just trying out a different coach?

You say above “…when we vid chat every month or two…” If I’m dosing big $ for a coach, I’d expect a vid check in a hell of a lot more often, and on a set schedule, not “every ____, or sometimes 2 x _____, if they don’t have time for me”

Coach to athlete fit is extremely important; and while I’m a huge believer in coaches & coaching, it’s a double edged sword: There are also millions of completely incompetent a$$ hats with their palms out, wanting your money.

How about just reaching out to a couple other coaches? These people are applying to you, to deserve a shot at your hard earned $$$. You are not ‘applying to them, to deserve a spot as one of their athletes’. It’s not a varsity team!!! It’s a paid service!!! Any prospective “coach” should be more than happy to give you a free 10 - 15 min intro vid chat, and that should be more than enough time to at least get the “intro feel”, and maybe you’d be a lot happier?

Good luck, brah! <3

[Jcmiii]

So, hopefully this statement doesn’t get me booted, , but some friends and I all made the move to e-bikes last year. I bought a Pivot Shuttle LT which is every bit of my 2014 Pivot Mach 6 in terms of fun and capability. Friends bought Treks and others. (Still have the Mach 6). We just aren’t in great shape anymore.

We’re older, 69 to 81, live in an area with virtually no road cycling, too dangerous, virtually no flats and lots of long steeper grades, nvm gnarly cross country style(?) MTB trails with many climbs and descents. The MTB trails aren’t downhill. They just have lots of punchy large elevation changes and end where they start.

Regardless, I suppose that all still doesn’t justify an e-bike in my mind because I can’t get over and don’t want to accept how much I’ve lost in fitness. Some part of me must have seen reason though.

I can go back out on 2-4 hour rides at will now, Zone 2 or as hard as I want to make. I’m stunned at the difference Zone 2 training and more hours on the bike has made and I’ve really only developed an effective understanding of current training science in the last 5 months! Riding has become very enjoyable again.

Bottom line was I accepted my limitations and found a way that worked in my circumstances. I prefer outdoors and could afford the price. I still kick myself for having fallen as far as I have, but that’s life. I’m not going to let that mistake prevent myself from moving forward now.